Welcome to this month’s edition of The Secret Subject Swap, Take 2! Presented to you by the lovely Karen of Baking in a Tornado, it all begins with participating bloggers sending in top secret prompts ahead of time. Each blogger is then assigned one of these prompts and the resulting posts are all shared at the same time!
My prompt: You had a horrendous day with your family. You argued with everyone even after you got a call from your son’s principal regarding his bad behavior. After a couple of glasses of wine, you fall asleep ready to start over tomorrow. The next morning, no one was home. Everyone gone. No note, just looks like they disappeared. What do you do?
It was submitted by: http://www.100lbCountdown.com
So be afraid, be very afraid of what I’m about to do with this one:
I woke up that morning with a pounding headache, laying across my bed, still in my clothes from the night before. It took me several minutes to fully realize that I was awake, and that I hadn’t even bothered to get under the covers. I knew I was exhausted last night, and the wine didn’t help, but this was a bit extreme.
That wasn’t all that was amiss. My husband wasn’t there either.
“That’s funny.” I thought, “Usually he sleeps in on the weekend.”
I walked downstairs, fully expecting to see my husband sitting in the chair with his laptop and both kids watching Saturday morning cartoons. But no one was around. Not even the animals. It was like the whole world had disappeared.
Just like in the movies.
Had the world ended and I missed it?
Was the world ending? I should have realized the signs: The cats within feet of each other? Apocalypse is nigh…
I made my way to the back porch and opened the door. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and I could hear the neighbor kids plain as day.
So much for that theory. The world was still there.
I got a lump in my throat. I tried to remember what exactly had started the argument the night before. There was a phone call from the school. The principal. Something about a note. The Professor was in serious trouble. Evil Genius was livid. And The Princess was not liking that someone else was taking the limelight from her.
I was upset, and the wine went down easily. It was all blurry after that, and I barely remember going into the bedroom to lie down.
And now it was so hard to think… especially with that loud whirring sound. Wait a minute-that whirring sound, WHERE WAS IT COMING FROM?
I followed it to the basement door. The secret passage. I had always wanted wanted a house with a secret passage. Evil Genius had come through and made pantry shelves that swung open in place of the door. Being an old house, the uneven floor and plaster walls made it not quite so secret. But it was stuck!
Pushing with all of my weight, I was able to slide the shelves aside. I peered into the dark. Dammit, the light wouldn’t work. I grabbed the lantern and headed down into the darkness.
The whirring sound grew louder as I approached the brick wall. But there was nothing there but the crawlspace. That icky, gross place under the house where the basement stopped. It was nothing but dirt and bugs. But the sound was driving me crazy, and somehow I knew that it must have something to do with my family vanishing.
I crawled up on the freezer and put my hand upon the wood. Only it didn’t feel like wood. It felt like… nothing. I pushed my hand through until I could not see my arm any more. I pulled back in horror-what was going on? Was this some sort of weird joke? I pushed forward again, this time with both hands and the rest of my body. And I fell forward right into the nothingness. And smacked my face hard against the floor. Because putting my arms out to stop myself would make sense.
After a moment of lying there upon the cold floor, I sat up and opened my eyes.
Instead of that icky, dirty, buggy space there was a room. Not just any room, like a command center. Like a batcave. Or that super secret room they won’t ever let you see at Target.
A voice boomed out of the shadows “Welcome back Tie-Dye Girl! We thought you were going to sleep all day.”
I turned, very slowly, only to come face to face with…nothing.
“Huh? I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I replied.
The voice sounded very annoyed. “Really? Again? Do we have to go over this EVERY TIME????” Roger, we really need to quit using the brain eraser on our agents.”
“Ummmm… brain eraser?” That would explain so very much about my life…
I heard a very loud sigh from, well, WHEREVER that voice was coming from. Mumbling, angry whispering. “We’re giving you the short version. We’re facing a world crisis and all reserve super agents have been activated. That includes you and the agents assigned to you that also happen to be your family.”
“World crisis?” I inquired.
“A caffeine and chocolate shortage of massive proportions. It seems that . Your son, The Professor, intercepted a message that was meant for the Evil Genius yesterday.”
“Wait a minute. My husband is the Evil Genius.”
“No he’s actually the Not So Evil Genius. The name just stuck. The actual Evil Genius is somebody else.”
Suddenly things were starting to fall into place. Sort of. “So my family isn’t missing? They’re saving the world?”
” No ma’am they are assisting the people saving the world.” The voice replied.
“I can’t say that I’m really understanding what you’re telling me.”
“You have a job to do. YOU have to stop the madness. You’re our only hope.”
That’s when it hit me. “Oh.My.God. I’m an Avenger.”
I heard something that sounded like a forehead being smacked. And then laughter. Lots of laughter. As a matter of fact, the laughter went on for about ten minutes.
“Actually, not quite. Here’s the story. Someone gave Tony Stark a magic mirror for his birthday, he’s so busy looking at himself that he won’t answer his phone. Thor had to attend some hair product convention because Fabio backed out at the last minute. Captain America has been trying so hard to catch up to modern day technology that he discovered the internet and we can’t drag him away. He muttered something about games called ‘Bejeweled Blitz’ and ‘Candy Crush’ when we talked to him. The Hulk is in an anger management session. Black Widow is nowhere to be found. And nobody cares about Hawkeye. So yeah, you’re it. So get into uniform and await your instructions.”
“So I guess it’s up to me.” After rummaging around for several minutes, I found my superhero outfit:
Protecting the earth from evil by dying them hideous shades of tie-dye! Look up in the sky, it’s a peacock, it’s a rainbow, it’s TIE-DYE GIRL!
“Take this rubber chicken and place it at these coordinates. This will disable the caffeine sucking machine and restore the world to its natural balance.”
“That’s it? I was really hoping for something a bit more, um, interesting.”
“Dammit Tie-Dye Girl, do you really want to exist in a world where this is no caffeine OR chocolate? We’re losing precious time! Not to mention that the rest of your family would really like to be done with dishwashing duty. You are welcome to switch places with one of them if you wish.”
“Okay” I said quickly. “Give me the rubber chicken.”
The next thing I knew I was transported to the most vile place on the face of the Earth. A place where few venture into and even fewer make it out of alive. Yes, I was in the Wal-Mart bathroom.
From the middle stall emerged a man who looked remarkably like Dermot Mulrooney. Or was it Dylan McDermott? “Tie-dye Girl. So we meet again.”
Again? We’d met before? I stood staring at the guy for a really long time. A REALLY long time. This was because I couldn’t remember his name. Was it the memory eraser or was it just my brain? Dang it he really looked familiar too. And what was I supposed to do????
Then I heard a voice in my head “Remember the rubber chicken. Use the rubber chicken…”
So I closed my eyes, and threw the chicken over his head. Whatever force the was guiding me wedged that rubber chicken smack in the middle of the spinning caffeine sucking machine. It stopped the machine dead. Right there in the Wal-Mart bathroom…
The world rejoiced. The Avengers were so thankful that they took me to the movies. It was the dollar movie and I’d seen it before, but it was really cool getting to hang out with actual superheroes. And Starbucks was so thrilled that they gave me a lifetime supply of free frappucinos.
And my family? Back home and off of dirty dish duty. Until the next time I need to save the world. I hear there may be a wine shortage. Nooooooooooooooooooooooo…
And of course in celebration I enjoyed some wine with my favorite superhero…
Now see what other talented bloggers have written! Here are the other participants in this month’s swap take 2:
http://www.menopausalmom.com Menopausal Mother
http://BakingInATornado.com Baking In A Tornado
http://www.eviljoyspeaks.wordpress.com Evil Joy Speaks
http://www.100lbCountdown.com 100lb Countdown
http://followmehome.shellybean.com Follow me home . .
http://dinoheromommy.com/ Dinosaur Superhero Mommy
http://stacysewsandschools.wordpress.com/ Stacy Sews and Schools
http://thisisdiscoveringme.wordpress.com/ Discovering Me
http://www.itsyummi.com It’s Yummilicious
http://dates2diapers2.blogspot.com Dates 2 Diapers
http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/ Confessions of a part-time working mom
I tried and tried to find 11 blogs that I follow on WordPress that had less than 200 and I was wildly unsuccessful. That says something for the blogs on here, that you all are AWESOME! And if I nominated you and you’re not into this type of thing, just ignore this and go on with your life. So here are the ones that I nominated:
The Sadder But Wiser Girl 